Welcome to the monthly digest for May
Hi ,
During May, Noel Turnbull and I reflected on the federal election outcome. Rev. Matthew Anstey provided an inside look at the ongoing debate over same-sex marriage in the Anglican Church. And Ronli Sifris examined the issue of conscientious objection in the voluntary assisted dying
debate.
If you’d like to send a Letter to the Editor or submit an article for publication, please contact me via editor@rationalist.com.au.
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Highlights from Rationale
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| Changing the optics of politics
By Noel Turnbull
Almost everyone will have ideas on what should be the priorities for the incoming Albanese government. While the manifesto was policy lite, there were many significant institutional proposals, such as rebuilding the Public Service and depoliticising it. The ‘Thodey review’ would be a good start, but a better one would be just to get back to the traditional concept of a professional, apolitical, expert group
capable of helping formulate policy and implementing it.
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| Liberal Party: Following the Christian right into electoral wilderness
By Si Gladman
With many of the moderates now gone, booted out of their seats in big-city suburbs across the country, it appears clear the Liberal Party’s long-running internal divide between moderates and conservatives is resolved. For many of the party stalwarts, the weekend’s election result was a disaster. For the likes of the Australian Christian Lobby, there were silver linings.
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MBJ's view on current affairs
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| Affirming same-sex marriage in the Anglican Church
By Matthew Anstey
Every three years, Anglicans from across Australia gather for our national synod, a five-day meeting to discuss important issues affecting the whole church. COVID meant we hadn’t met since 2017. And, in the last five years, much has changed regarding the issue of same-sex marriage within Australian society. Within the church, attitudes are changing, albeit at a slower pace than some of us wish
for.
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| Bertrand Russell’s universe
By Myint Zan
One hundred and fifty years ago on 18 May 1872 the philosopher Bertrand Russell was born. Of everything he said and wrote during his 97 years of life, I want to focus on just four words that he said during one particular interview. The words were stated to one of his biographers, Alan Wood, whose book Bertrand Russell: The Passionate Skeptic was first published in 1958. In the book, Wood asked Russell why
there shouldn’t be an afterlife somewhere in the universe, if not on Earth, so that people who have suffered injustice and deprivations in this life could be compensated in the afterlife. Russell, in the year 1957, was in his mid-eighties. He pondered a while before apparently answering: “The universe is unjust.”
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| Home to roost: Getting out of our housing mess
By David James
The progressive lowering of interest rates to almost zero since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 has triggered a house price bubble that has divided the community between older people, who bought at more reasonable levels, and younger generations, who purchased at higher levels. The game of ever-cheaper debt came to an end when the Consumer Price Index (CPI) came in at 5.1 per cent over the year, the
largest increase in inflation since 2000. The Reserve Bank increased interest rates by 0.25 per cent, the first jump in over 11 years. The wheel, it would seem, is turning. How did we get into this mess?
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| The question of conscientious objection in the voluntary assisted dying debate
By Ronli Sifris
Mill made Voluntary assisted dying (VAD) has been legal in countries such as Switzerland and the Netherlands for more than a decade. In Australia, aside from a brief introduction by the Northern Territory in 1995 that was quickly overruled by conflicting federal legislation, VAD remained illegal in every Australian jurisdiction until 2017. In 2017, Victoria took the lead, enacting the Voluntary
Assisted Dying Act 2017 (Vic). In 2019, Western Australia followed suit, and in 2021 VAD became legal in Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland.
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